Description

In a remote village of Ur, four orphan boys were raised by the priest Topapa. Once, the Crystal of Wind, guarded by the people of Ur, sank deep into the earth. The four boys decided to retrieve it from there and went down into an underground cave. But when they found the crystal, it spoke to them and from its words they understood they were chosen for a much more important and world-embracing mission...

Final Fantasy III is the third Final Fantasy game for the NES platform. It was the last Final Fantasy game that does not use the ATB (active time battle) system (until it was removed again in Final Fantasy X). The turn-based battle engine has been improved: if the enemy is defeated, the next character will automatically switch to another enemy, and not hit the air, like in the previous two games.

Before the game begins, you give names to the four boys, which look the same (only in different colors) and belong all to the same class - the scrawny Onion Kid. Very quickly, however, you're able to give your heroes "jobs" - proper character classes, such as Fighter, Black Mage, Viking, Shaman and others. Each job has different capabilities and can use different equipment. More powerful jobs become available later in the game. The characters can change jobs throughout the game, though it costs them "Capacity Points" (which are earned in battle).

The game itself is, like the previous games, a top-down RPG where your characters travel in the overworld, sometimes entering cities and dungeons to buy equipment, rest and fight random encounters and bosses with turn-based combat.

Some minor issues were slightly changed to resemble more the classical Final Fantasy look (such as the menu layout etc.).

Forums

Trivia

Fan translation

Final Fantasy III for the NES was never released by Squaresoft outside of Japan. However the game has been translated to English by amateur translators. In order to play this version you'll need a NES emulator and the patched/translated ROM file.

The game called Final Fantasy III (SNES), that was released in the U.S. was actually Final Fantasy VI (it was the sixth game of the series to appear in Japan).

Innovations

Final Fantasy III was the first Final Fantasy game where you could summon monsters, meet moogles and where hit points are shown graphically above characters in-battle rather than as text in the caption box. It was the last Final Fantasy game to use the "level" magic system (from level 1 to level 8 spells).

Music

Final Fantasy III is the NES/Famicom game that has the biggest quantity of songs in it. Technically, there are 58 tunes! (but some of them are just when the hero plays piano, etc...) The average NES games have 10-25 tunes in them.

Remake

Final Fantasy III is a remake of this game, originally appearing on the Nintendo DS. It is the first version to officially appear outside Japan.